Granny, comfortably settled in a big rocking chair, looked mysterious. "I expect it was her scowl. She frowned at Richard, and Richard, you know, Stanley, isn't used to frowns. Girls have always smiled at him. I expect Rebecca Mary's scowl interested him."
"That might be. A girl has to offer a man new stuff to interest him. You may be right."
"Of course I'm right. What are you doing here, Stanley?"
And while Stanley told Granny and Joan about the sketching trip which had brought him to Spirit Lake, where he had found some corking effects, Rebecca Mary and Richard danced on a floor which was far from smooth and to the music of a piano and a violin which were not as harmonious as you would wish a piano and a violin to be, but both Rebecca Mary and Richard said that it was the jolliest dance they had ever had when it was over, and hand in hand they ran back to the hotel and the waiting dinner. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to go hand in hand, but Rebecca Mary was quite breathless when she came up the steps after she had pulled her fingers from Richard's hand.
"I hope we haven't kept you waiting," she cried. "But it was such fun."
"Much you care about us when you scorned my invitation and went off with my brother," Stanley said, as if cut to the very quick. "I don't know what reparation you can make unless you sit beside me and talk exclusively to me."
"Oh!" Rebecca Mary was pinkly embarrassed. "I didn't hear you deliver any invitation," she stammered, but her explanation only made matters worse.
"Granny heard it and so did Joan." Stanley quite enjoyed teasing Rebecca Mary into pink embarrassment. Perhaps he wanted to see the scowl which had interested Richard, but if he did he was disappointed for Rebecca Mary never frowned once. She was too happy and too contented. She could only laugh and smile as she promised to sit beside him and talk exclusively to him. That wasn't so easy to do as to promise for there were other girls on the screened porch where the dinner tables were arranged, and they smiled and nodded to Richard until he had to go and speak to them.
"My brother Richard is very popular with the girls," Stanley told Rebecca Mary with a twinkle. "He's quite a boy, is my brother Richard."
"M-m," was all that Rebecca Mary would say to that, but she watched his brother Richard out of the tail of her eye.